A Low Complexity VLSI Architecture for Multi-Focus Image Fusion in DCT Domain
This work addresses image fusion for handheld portable devices like cameras and sensors, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing DCT-based methods with a focus on hardware optimization.
The paper tackles the problem of multi-focus image fusion by proposing a low-complexity method in the DCT domain with VLSI implementation, achieving a maximum frequency of 221 MHz on FPGA, 42% resource usage, and the ability to process 4K images at 60 fps with low power consumption.
Due to the confined focal length of optical sensors, focusing all objects in a scene with a single sensor is a difficult task. To handle such a situation, image fusion methods are used in multi-focus environment. Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) is a widely used image compression transform, image fusion in DCT domain is an efficient method. This paper presents a low complexity approach for multi-focus image fusion and its VLSI implementation using DCT. The proposed method is evaluated using reference/non-reference fusion measure criteria and the obtained results asserts it's effectiveness. The maximum synthesized frequency on FPGA is found to be 221 MHz and consumes 42% of FPGA resources. The proposed method consumes very less power and can process 4K resolution images at the rate of 60 frames per second which makes the hardware suitable for handheld portable devices such as camera module and wireless image sensors.